Independent Research – Film Openings

Independent Research – Film Openings

Film openings help set the scene to a movie and try to give the audience a clear idea of the genre of film. These tend to be around 5 minutes and during this time give the names of main actors and crew who played a key role in the making of the film. The names of the cast of the movie are normally in order of importance in the movie therefore the main characters will come first, on top of this famous actors will also have priority over lesser known actors. These names are normally are shown or an opening scene or a short animations.

An example of a film that has titles over the opening scene is “Children of Men”

 

An example of a film that is over an animation is Tintin

 

The names can sometimes be “integrated” into the scene which means they are part of the environment. This is evident in some openings like “Catch Me If You Can”, but these tend to be higher budget films since these have more money for opening credits and normally have a dedicated team to work on them.

 

Film openings also display institutional logos or names at the very beginning. This displays who it is made by and from these logos people can normally see whether it is made by an independent film company or a mainstream film company. An example of this is evident in the Children of Men clip above since the initial logo shown is the Universal logo which has a impressive animation and bright colours which stand out whereas after the Strike logo appears which is less impressive and therefore a clear contrast can be seen between the mainstream and independent institutions.

 

Michael